Museum hosts talk on sexuality in ancient times

Dr. Jennifer Wegner and Classical Studies professor Ralph Rosen told “salacious” stories of ancient love affairs at the Penn Museum last night.

“I was asked to tell the audience spicy tales of ancient romances gone wrong,” Wegner, associate curator of the Egyptian Section at the Penn Museum, said. The two hosted the annual Penn Museum Young Friends’ Valentine’s Event.

Wegner and Rosen exposed numerous sexual stories from the ancient world. Wegner talked about events from the ancient Egyptian world, while Rosen focused on texts from ancient Greece and Rome.

“We wanted the speakers to put a twist on Valentine’s Day,” said Beatrice Jarocha-Ernst, an administrative coordinator at the Penn Museum. “It’s fun to look at Valentine’s Day in a different way and know that it wasn’t always candy and roses in the ancient world.”

“I asked if I should censor my material,” said Rosen, “but the board told me the more scandalous, the better.”

Past Valentine’s Day events at the museum have included Ancient Girls Gone Wild and Sex in the Ancient City.

The goal of the Young Friends Program is to engage students and young professionals in the Philadelphia area by making archaeology and the events of the ancient world more approachable.

“We don’t want to have a regular, boring museum lecture,” said Allison Levy, one of the co-chairs of last night’s event.

Both Wegner and Rosen used PowerPoint presentations to display pictures of ancient figures performing graphic sexual acts.

Images of sexual imagery on ancient artifacts are essentially “versions of ancient pornography,” Rosen said.

“I was definitely taken aback by certain images and stories,” said Kate Murray, a local Philadelphia resident.

Among the 75 to 100 people in attendance, only one or two were Penn students.

“It’s my last semester at Penn,” said College senior Alex Olsman. “I need to take advantage of things like this on campus.”

In addition to sexual imagery, Wegner also displayed pictures of some modern romance novels and noted their authors drew inspiration from the sexual stories of ancient Egypt.

“I like to draw parallels between the ancient and modern worlds,” Wegner said. “People usually don’t realize that ancient people were just like us.”

Rosen agreed. “In the realm of love and erotics, there are many continuities between the ancient world and the modern world,” he said. “Sex is still sex.”

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